Can I Use these Scripts with IDS?

Many of the scripts and techniques will work as well for IDS as they do with OnLine. In fact, many of the scripts were modified by Carlton Doe for his initial book on the IDS engine, INFORMlX-OnLine Dynamic Server Handbook also from Informix Press. I'm including Carlton's modified scripts in the CD-ROM that accompanies this book, although I'm not discussing the IDS versions.

What strikes me as I go through this chapter for the second edition of this book is exactly how far we've come from OnLine to INFORMIX-Dynamic Server. While many of the scripts will actually function properly in the IDS world, they are no longer needed because IDS has provided us with more sophisticated tools, better monitoring, and better control of the database than we had just three years ago. Many of the things done in this chapter with scripts can be done with SMI queries in IDS. Using SMI can be a much more useful technique simply because you do not have to be resident on the particular machine in order to get the information. Using SMI, you can monitor a remote machine much more easily than ever before. Using the graphical user tools currently provided on Windows NT gives you levels of monitoring and control that were never possible with OnLine engines.

Much of the initial usefulness of this chapter was that it allowed the DBA to work around limitations in the engine. Many of those limitations and restrictions are now gone, but the techniques and rationale behind the method of scripting has remained the same.

Personally, much of my current scripting is done with PERL rather than the UNIX or MKS shells. Almost anything you could do with the earlier shells can be done much easier and more elegantly with the PERL language. A perfect example is the excellent set of tools that were written by Technology Investments and called ztools. These tools are now sold by BMC software. The scripts were written in PERL and did not even require the Informix extensions to the language. They would run an Informix utility from within PERL and parse the output to provide the data they needed.

While the individual scripts and programs should be useful in the day-to-day operations of your database, it is likely that you will have to massage and modify the programs for your own use. What you as a DBA should take from this chapter are concepts and approaches for how to use various tools to do your bidding. The goal here is to give you a place to start and to point you in the direction of creating your own database tools.